I was having some issues tuning my Wilson FGT-5 antennas. These are the 5 ft long silverloads with the tuning tip (top loaded).

SWRs were fine with the passenger side antenna but they were off the chart when trying to tune the drivers side.

After going through the antenna mounts,coax, grounds etc I decided to check the antenna itself. With an Ohm meter there was no continuity between the tip and the threaded section.

Being as I was curious I decided to find out why. Stripped the heat shrink off of the bottom 2 inches to get passed the metal section and to the fiberglass section and main wire. The main wires solder joint to the base was extremely thin and had broken. This was a brand new antenna and they run about 40.00 each at some of the truck stops.


The fix was pretty easy as all it took was to resolder the wire with a better joint and wrape the lower section with electrical tape.

So if you have a wilson fiberglass that refuses to tune and has high swr then this is something to check. I have read of numberous reports of these antennas failing in the last couple days so I am betting this is why they are failing.